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If others can detect a green tinge let me know and I'll look into this?

I see a kind of greenish hue in clouds in image 2 and 5. Basically identical images.

But not disturbing to me.

Perhaps the sligth green tinge is because time of day in screenshot? Sometimes it's hard to judge a single screenshot, better see it in relation to time of day, its environment during game play or in a short video. Then things fall in its place.

On the other hand it is a matter of taste, colour calibration, quality of the monitor itself, screen presets, and the condition of someone's eyes (colour perception).

Or a combination of these factors involved that people (seem to) see the 'few drops of' green colour.

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1. The direct lighting is additive, meaning it is ambient color + sun color. Stock game has a yellowish sun color with blue ambient which results in a greenish cast. Here is an example, left is stock right is corrected lighting.

2. The tonemapper the game is currently using is doing some screwy things and doesn't auto-whitebalance right. This is really obvious if a plane is on fire and the camera is close to it; everything will take on a strong green color cast as well as a contrast boost. Fixing this part means a few shaders have to be rewritten.

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A few more screen shots of WIP, now I'm moving my attention to cloud modelling for this mod.

Cheers

HH

Thanks for the replies so far. Glad it wasn't just me. LizLemon thanks for your reply, I hope that someone with shader knowledge can help with this as the current sky colour in BoX and the awful cartoon casts spoil it so much for me

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Thanks for the replies so far. Glad it wasn't just me. LizLemon thanks for your reply, I hope that someone with shader knowledge can help with this as the current sky colour in BoX and the awful cartoon casts spoil it so much for me

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1. The direct lighting is additive, meaning it is ambient color + sun color. Stock game has a yellowish sun color with blue ambient which results in a greenish cast. Here is an example, left is stock right is corrected lighting.

2. The tonemapper the game is currently using is doing some screwy things and doesn't auto-whitebalance right. This is really obvious if a plane is on fire and the camera is close to it; everything will take on a strong green color cast as well as a contrast boost. Fixing this part means a few shaders have to be rewritten.

This is interesting, perhaps with a shader app, such as ReShade, this could be corrected...

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It's another great screenshot and much better without the oversaturated colour palette that is currently in use.

The last screenshot HH...... I like the subdued, diffused look.

Just wondering why the choice of green light for a sundown image rather than warm orange/yellow/golden sunset?

Still loving this mod work and looking forward to when you finalise it 👍

Everything to do with the environmental aspects of this sim is about balance and compromises... push too far to achieve a particular look at a particular time of day and altitude and it upsets the look of so many other things at other times of day or from other vantage points.

Partly I've already created settings with the emphasis on warmer more golden sunrises/sunsets, partly my desire was to regulate the look of the overcast skies during the day which restricts what is possible at sunrise/sunset.

I'd still say though that much comes down to personal preference and subjective judgment as I just don't see the green to the extent you seem to and what you seem to prefer just looks too blue to me.

My own monitor is calibrated to a neutrally balanced RGB and shows neutral greys as being just that, so I'm happy to trust that monitor is set up properly and that my eyes perceive neutral greys as neutral greys. As for the above image you comment upon , the RGB value of the sky is strongest in the blue channel, but only slightly so, the RGB value of the sea is slightly strongest in the green channel which is how I associate the sea, the horizon between the two is very slightly strongest in the red channel due to the evening sun. However if truth be told they are all so close to neutrally balanced settings that in isolation most folk would just call all of them grey which is what I associate with overcast skies.

There have been many psychological studies done on the perception of hue/tone showing that the eye and brain can only really judge contrast but not absolute value, so it might simply be that what you perceive as green is really just a lower blue value than you expect?

HH

EDIT:

The attached photo is of "grey" overcast clouds taken in real life, to my eye these look real and the colours look correct which may be an odd thing to say about real life but some photo's can look a bit unreal if post processed.

The RGB value of all these grey clouds are strongest in the green channel, admittedly only slightly but it's the same subtle green balance I've been trying to achieve in my mod as this is how I associate overcast grey clouds looking in the real world.

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In many respects I've nothing "new" to say here but folk do keep sending private words of encouragement, so I like to periodically post something just to say I am still chipping away with this long term project as and when time permits.

I've spent so long working with these experimental mods I'd somewhat forgotten what the stock game looks like, but I was reminded today when running a few side-by-side direct comparison tests with identical settings to verify my optimisation techniques work and aren't slowing things down compared to the stock game.

generally things are running within about +/- 5% and in the case below I was surprised to get an identical 142FPS showing "heavy" clouds don't have to be a frame rate killer.

Cheers HH

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That is a great difference, cloud colour looks impressive too with none of the oversaturated blobs stuck on the cloud balls! So much more natural than what there currently is. Out of interest do you see similar issues with the aircraft disappearing in front of your modded version?

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That is a great difference, cloud colour looks impressive too with none of the oversaturated blobs stuck on the cloud balls! So much more natural than what there currently is. Out of interest do you see similar issues with the aircraft disappearing in front of your modded version?

Cheers, Mysticpuma

I know many folk talk about the disappearing aircraft problem but I can honestly say it has never been something that's ever bothered me, or perhaps my situational awareness is so poor I never notice other aircraft even when they are there?

Alternatively it might be that I've inadvertently stumbled upon a fix for it?

Just to be clear about the exact problem, are you referring to planes that stutter in and out of view as they pass in front of clouds? Whilst I don't recall noticing planes completely disappear and then "pop" back into view I do experienced problems with increased jaggies on the rigging of WWI aircraft when they pass in front of some clouds which can give the appearance of the finer details flickering as the plane moves.

HH.

Also on a side note I've mentioned before that without access to rewrite a significant portion of the core game engine and the skills to do so I don't believe it is possible to create truly dynamic weather that changes during a mission, but that there are tricks you can play to hint at such things. I've been tinkering with these tricks for quite a while and last night saw my first truly passable approximation of a heavy cloud bank drifting in to fill clear skies from approx. 40-50km away: that is to say the randomisation built into my mod finally aligned some circumstances to deliver something I'd hoped I'd eventually get to see at some point.

I want to clearly state that folks should NOT expect any version of this mod at whatever point a first version or subsequent versions is ready to release to include dynamic weather. However I think I can reliably say that although the majority of this project focusses on improving the ordinary and familiar you'll have seen many times before, you may have to fly many hundreds of missions, if not thousands at very different times of day, times of year and under different weather conditions before there's any chance you'll have seen all it can potentially offer as it is still surprising me.

Edited July 15 by HappyHaddock

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@HappyHaddock just wanted to drop in and say all of the screenshots in this thread are absolutely stunning. I had no idea the Il-2 engine was capable of looking that good, in terms of sky/clouds/weather. Those are things that none of the sims around really get right, unless you have some expensive third-party addons for P3D or whatever.

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The disappearing contacts is because the clouds are being rendered at a lower resolution and the mask for the plane is also at that lower resolution.

Perhaps that's why I've never been bothered by this problem as I naturally run clouds at high resolutions so I've never needed a mod to resolve this even in the stock game with mods-off.

At some point I might have to check if the tweaks I'm making in remapping all the cloud formations resolve the problem of contacts disappearing when set to low cloud settings as I only test my mod at the highest of all graphical settings.

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Perhaps that's why I've never been bothered by this problem as I naturally run clouds at high resolutions so I've never needed a mod to resolve this even in the stock game with mods-off.

At some point I might have to check if the tweaks I'm making in remapping all the cloud formations resolve the problem of contacts disappearing when set to low cloud settings as I only test my mod at the highest of all graphical settings.

HH

I run the game with cloud samples set at 4096 but I still get horrifying aliasing, including disappearing contacts. What magic have you contrived?

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I run the game with cloud samples set at 4096 but I still get horrifying aliasing, including disappearing contacts. What magic have you contrived?

As mentioned I do see some ugly aliasing which can really highlight the "jaggies" at times, but I don't ever recall planes that pop in and out of view because of the clouds even in the rare occasions I've been testing this with mods off.

I've messed about with so many things to do with graphical settings as well as modding the clouds I suppose it is theoretically possible I've accidentally stumbled upon a solution to a problem I wasn't experiencing, but I doubt it.... Perhaps I'll have to spend a bit more time in mods-off seeing if the game will show me this problem everyone else talks about or if there truly is something magical and quirky about the way I've set up IL2 that has unintentionally circumvented this issue.

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In many respects I've nothing "new" to say here but folk do keep sending private words of encouragement, so I like to periodically post something just to say I am still chipping away with this long term project as and when time permits.

I've spent so long working with these experimental mods I'd somewhat forgotten what the stock game looks like, but I was reminded today when running a few side-by-side direct comparison tests with identical settings to verify my optimisation techniques work and aren't slowing things down compared to the stock game.

generally things are running within about +/- 5% and in the case below I was surprised to get an identical 142FPS showing "heavy" clouds don't have to be a frame rate killer.

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As mentioned I do see some ugly aliasing which can really highlight the "jaggies" at times, but I don't ever recall planes that pop in and out of view because of the clouds even in the rare occasions I've been testing this with mods off.

I've messed about with so many things to do with graphical settings as well as modding the clouds I suppose it is theoretically possible I've accidentally stumbled upon a solution to a problem I wasn't experiencing, but I doubt it.... Perhaps I'll have to spend a bit more time in mods-off seeing if the game will show me this problem everyone else talks about or if there truly is something magical and quirky about the way I've set up IL2 that has unintentionally circumvented this issue.

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That video pretty clearly illustrates the problem others describe, but whilst I do get some "jaggies" I don't get the objects that disappear, and I certainly don't get such severe problems with objects when they are as close as this.

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That video pretty clearly illustrates the problem others describe, but whilst I do get some "jaggies" I don't get the objects that disappear, and I certainly don't get such severe problems with objects when they are as close as this.

Well, I did. And this with high/ultra settings. IIRC, this bug was introduced with the new cloud/sky system.

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There is much about the natural world that is so instinctively familiar that whilst we can rarely pinpoint and consciously describe what it is that makes something look right, we will all spot when it looks wrong and may be left scratching our heads about precisely what it is that may not be quite as it should be.

I've probably spent more time than is healthy tweaking the seasonal balance of the "in game" natural light and I'm finally getting to the stage I'm finding settings that don't just look great in any single staged screenshot, but which actually work across many times of day and weather conditions without unduly compromising any one aspect in favour of another.

Figuring that the difference between winter light and summer light should be obvious I thought it would be curious to snap two screenshots of the same plane at midday at altitude so as to be well above the clouds (save perhaps for an odd trace of cirrus cloud) and see if I could later work out which was the summer shot and which was the winter without any visible clues from the map or ground being available, just the blue sky and the plane to judge by....

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Just discovered this. This is some excellent work and a vast improvement, in my opinion, over what the stock game offers. The sky has the least visual impact at this point. This mod looks like just what the doctor ordered. Great work! It will be worth the wait so take all the time you need to get it as perfect as the game engine allows.

I am looking forward to installing this mod.

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Just a quick question about what is a fairly trivial and subtle matter which I suspect must be to do with the hundreds of shaders this sim uses to regulate all manner of lighting effects, but which has become ever more apparent the more I play with the sky...

When other people first start up a new mission do you find it takes a brief moment for all the different lighting effects to "warm up" or "kick in" ?

If you have not been intently studying the lighting effects on things like clouds you might not notice this even if it is occurring and it might be some quirk of all the changes my mods are making, but for the first 5 - 10 seconds I now find myself actually watching and waiting for the hues, tones, shadows and highlights to stabilise.

I don't know if this just happens in the quick mission generator I use to test aspects of this mod, and it's not a major issue if intending to fly the one mission over many minutes or hours as things do seem stable once up and running, but when wanting to fire up a quick mission only for about five seconds just to check the impact of a change to the lighting, having to wait up to 10seconds for the lighting to stabilise could be seen as a significant delay.

I know the stock game isn't so dramatic with sunrises and sunsets but the effects of different lighting effects kicking in can be most noticeable on the clouds at these times where I tend to find the most prominent and often last change to occur a few seconds after starting a mission is adding in deeper/darker shadows on the shaded side of clouds away from the sun.

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So far I have experienced no pauses as described. Once I get to the "Click Pause" screen things get going right off.

If it matters...

It's not so much that the game enforces a delay as I can start flying around instantly I click to "un-pause" it, it's just from an aesthetics point of view I like to give the graphics a few seconds to settle down before getting going.

HH

48 minutes ago, Danziger said:

I usually have to wait a few seconds for everything to get settled before un-pausing. Cockpit textures, grass, trees etc. I've never paid attention to the colors though.

I suspect, but do not know, that it's all related to the numerous shaders kicking in. So far I've only skimmed through each of the shaders quickly out of idle curiosity, and what I know about coding HLSL could be written on a postage stamp with a six inch paint brush... but depending upon what is on screen at any moment there's normally well over a hundred shaders in use, and turning each on and off in succession clearly shows what some do, whilst others leave you wondering what is different that you haven't picked up on having changed.

HH

Edited July 28 by HappyHaddock

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@HappyHaddock I really notice this in VR. I believe your spot on with it being the shaders loading. It happens every time a new mission is loading. It lasts about a second or two just long enough for me to look from left to right. I believe this has done this for quite a while. At least since I’ve been playing GB. I’ve suped up my rig over the past couple years and it makes no difference.

Currently I have

CPU : Ryzen 5 3600X

GPU : MSI duke 1080ti

Ram : Corsair dominator 16GB 3200Mhz DDR4

MB : B450 Tomahawk

Mem : 2TB disc and 250GB SSD

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It's not so much that the game enforces a delay as I can start flying around instantly I click to "un-pause" it, it's just from an aesthetics point of view I like to give the graphics a few seconds to settle down before getting going.

HH

I suspect, but do not know, that it's all related to the numerous shaders kicking in. So far I've only skimmed through each of the shaders quickly out of idle curiosity, and what I know about coding HLSL could be written on a postage stamp with a six inch paint brush... but depending upon what is on screen at any moment there's normally well over a hundred shaders in use, and turning each on and off in succession clearly shows what some do, whilst others leave you wondering what is different that you haven't picked up on having changed.

HH

What you are talking about is caused by the autoexposure of the tonemapper.

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What you are talking about is caused by the autoexposure of the tonemapper.

Being ignorant of this aspect of the sim/coding, could I ask if the tonemapper a single shader among the hundreds in use, or is this some sort of higher tier bit of programming that utilises/controls some/all the various shaders?

Given the depth to which you seem to have investigated the workings of this sim I probably don't need to tell you how this seems to "draw you down the rabbit hole" and that having decided exactly what/how to tackle any particular modding project, there's always just a little bit more that you think it might be worth investigating and learning about such that the more you do the more you keep moving the goal posts.

Cheers HH

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There are really only a few dozen shaders this game uses, migoto just splits vertex and pixel shaders up even though they are all part of most of the time you should only care about one of them. And lots of the shaders aren't even worth bothering with.

The tonemapper is handling autoexposure, some contrast expansion, bloom and a bit of white balance. Basically the whole thing needs to be rewritten though as all of those things have issues.

Autoexposure is nice in FPS or other games where you can be indoor then outdoors, but doesnt make much sense in a flight sim. Especially since bright things like engine fires completely trip it up. Its better to just forget about autoexposure all together and cheese things a bit through lighting.

Bloom looks bad in this game. Sometimes it will take on a color cast, partially caused by the incorrect sun color, and end up being rainbowish as angle changes.

White balance wigs out when things like fires take up a good portion of the screen. Not that it does a good job normally.

So yeah, the entirety of the shader needs to be rewritten. You can only disable stuff like HDR to get around it.

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There are really only a few dozen shaders this game uses, migoto just splits vertex and pixel shaders up even though they are all part of most of the time you should only care about one of them. And lots of the shaders aren't even worth bothering with.

The tonemapper is handling autoexposure, some contrast expansion, bloom and a bit of white balance. Basically the whole thing needs to be rewritten though as all of those things have issues.

Autoexposure is nice in FPS or other games where you can be indoor then outdoors, but doesnt make much sense in a flight sim. Especially since bright things like engine fires completely trip it up. Its better to just forget about autoexposure all together and cheese things a bit through lighting.

Bloom looks bad in this game. Sometimes it will take on a color cast, partially caused by the incorrect sun color, and end up being rainbowish as angle changes.

White balance wigs out when things like fires take up a good portion of the screen. Not that it does a good job normally.

So yeah, the entirety of the shader needs to be rewritten. You can only disable stuff like HDR to get around it.

Thanks for the info,

you say there are only a few dozen shaders this game uses, my understanding (albeit limited) of HLSL was that it enabled bespoke shaders to be written specifically for individual features within particular games rather than calling on generic ones from an extensive list within directX. If you scroll through all the hundred plus vertex and pixel shaders in IL2 turning them on/off one at a time it's clear what some do and less obvious what others may impact upon, though my feeling was that whilst things to do with the clouds or ground may always be relevant, if you have, for example, a shader relating to the reflectivity of the canopy on a Me109, clearly you won't see it doing anything if you are flying a camel against a Dr1, this shader will just sit idle in the background.

I assume all the shaders must do "something" it is just that there may only be a few key ones that are relevant to everyone all of the time.

If the devs are working on increasing visibility/viewing distances it might be that all the shaders will get looked at again?